Richard Petty won the 1979 Daytona 500 in unbelievable style.
He was more than a half-lap behind Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison when the two collided on the final lap.
They ended their race in the infield grass. Petty went on to win his sixth Dayton 500.
Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup event was not the running of this year's Daytona 500, but it was a superspeedway race -- and it ended with cars colliding.
The GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway has been dubbed the 'Dega Demolition after multiple multi-car crashes wiped out half of the field, including a crash on the final lap when Landon Cassill's No. 38 made contact with Cole Whitt's No. 98 car.
The outcry was immediate. Fans and commentators were stunned.
"I don't know how to explain this. I've never seen anything like this, ever," legendary racer and analyst Darrell Waltrip said as footage of the wrecked cars aired live.
"Bumper cars at 100 miles per hour," the newly retired Jeff Gordon said.
"I just, I don't know how to explain it," Waltrip said.
But the explanation is easy: This is -- and is not -- the racing of NASCAR in the last 20 years, somehow at the same time.
For starters, this is an updated version of the run 'em and bump 'em NASCAR.
"We've had crashes like this for decades," Cassill said in an interview Monday with the Washington Post. "As the field has gotten more competitive and tighter, the crashes might be more frequent nowadays than it used to be, but it still looks the same as it used to."
This is no longer Gordon's NASCAR. He put a premium on racing clean and was rarely an instigator.
But this is also the new age of NASCAR, where at superspeedway races they run three wide and 10 rows deep and it feels like anybody can pull through the marbles a winner. This is the new age of NASCAR, where - at times - racing looks a bit more like a demolition derby and less like what puts your uncle to sleep every Sunday afternoon.
Right after crossing the finish line, Cassill's radio call to his pit crew acknowledged he may have caused the crash.
"The 98 came down and I got into him," Cassill said.
NASCAR broadcaster Mike Joy called the crash and the finish without taking a breath in between: "Trouble! Car hard in the wall. Two of them. Keslowski to the line."
Brad Keslowski, who has had his own share of late-race crashes, took home the victory.
Cassill's bump of the 98, though, took out AJ Allmendinger, Bobby Labonte, Rickey Stenhouse Jr., Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick.
Harvick, who finished 15th, had some words about the GEICO 500's last-lap crash and Cassill, who finished 11th.
"Landon Cassill was trying to cause a wreck for the last 40 laps and he finally got it done there at the end," Harvick told Fox and the nation watching the race on television.
Cassill, whose only top-five Sprint Cup finish came at Talladega in October 2014, found out about Harvick's comments via Twitter, according to The Gazette's Jeremiah Davis.
"I don't really take anything that guy says personally, because [Harvick's] got a reputation for being fairly emotional and can't handle himself," Cassill said. "He'll get over it. Two for the last few superspeedway races ended under a huge wreck because of him. I find it kind of funny he's mad at me. His reputation is pretty thin-skinned. That's just who he is."
"It's a shame because in any other part of the race, either the 98 would've given me more room or I would've checked up, but when you're coming to the checkers, nobody's going to do that. You saw the 4 car [Harvick] wreck the whole field at Daytona last year in very similar fashion. He drove right over the 11 car [Denny Hamlin] and that was the wreck that caused the 3 car [Austin Dillon] to go up in the grandstands. How are you supposed to say that's anybody's fault? It's superspeedway racing, really."
A spokesperson for Cassill said the driver didn't wish to speak further about Harvick's comments, but that he felt he needed to make the initial comments to defend himself.
Cassill's tag of Whitt was obviously not the only crash on Sunday. In fact, the race has been dubbed the 'Dega Demolition, and 35 of 40 cars involved sustained damage.
On Lap 96, Chris Buescher found himself doing three barrel rolls at 190 miles per hour after he was nudged from behind.
"I am pretty sick and tired of speedway racing at this point," Buescher said, per Fox Sports.
But crashes in NASCAR are like a fight in hockey or a batter being plunked in baseball. They aren't what the sport is, but they cause even the casual fan to take notice.
"There are a lot more rules than there used to be," Cassill said of the new low downforce rules and the new Sprint Cup format. "NASCAR as a governing body is more sophisticated and I think it's created a more competitive environment."
Kurt Busch, the reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, told Fox Sports he doesn't have a solution.
"It's been this way for 30 years," Busch said. "So . . . stop complaining about it, I guess."
Cassill said he could see where Buescher is tired of what's happened to him. His teammate has had two Cup races where he's gotten wrecked when it wasn't too much of his own fault.
"He just wants a good finish," Cassill said.
But he can also see Busch's standpoint, too.
Cassill remembers as a kid flipping through a racing magazine and seeing a frame-by-frame picture of Steve Grissom's car flying through the air and into the fence in 1997 at Atlanta.
"The frame by frame looked a lot like what Austin Dillon's crash at Daytona looked like last year," Cassill said. "NASCAR constantly evaluates the product and how the fans feel about it. I don't think superspeedway racing is anything drastically different now than it was 20 years ago. If [NASCAR] wanted to separate the field a little bit and keep the cars from running in a pack of 30 . . . they could probably do that. . . . If they decide to change the way we go to Daytona and Talladega, I'm sure it'll be pretty well thought out."
Rubbing is racing.
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